Get on board

I’m still on a high from choir on Monday night, loving the song we sang together, each of us singing such simple parts yet when combined making such complex, layered beauty. It reminded me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, about how he believed that the best chance of achieving personal freedom is by surrendering individual rights for the collective common good. The paradoxical concept of less is more. A similar idea applies to how we raise Noah, teaching him painful lessons like not always getting what he wants, having to share, to be polite and considerate – curtailing his natural instinct and immediate advantage in exchange for getting along, fitting in, being liked. Making his life easier. The challenge for Em and me is to feel confident about which freedoms need curtailing, but in many ways it is easy – we just repeat the lessons we learnt from our parents. Like cultural memes they wouldn’t have lasted so long unless they were important and ultimately effective.


Em introduced me to Stir-up Sunday the other day, the day when Christmas puddings are traditionally made. She’s put the date in the calendar, 20th November this year, and she’s planning to get on board and make hers too. As 21st century atheists we don’t have many traditions in our life and we’d like to have more – opportunities to get together with friends and family, share a meal or do something together, create positive memories and reinforce our sense of belonging. Thinking these thoughts we decided to have a bonfire tonight to celebrate the end of winter and the start of spring. With one eye on creating family traditions we borrowed the idea of burning something that symbolises something you’d like to leave behind. So the morning of the first day of spring on our little farm was spent collecting wood and piling it high for our bonfire.


When we came to set it alight after dinner it had been raining and the dark hills would suddenly be backlit by lightning, while distant rumbles of thunder were upstaged by the old, mouldy bamboo poles on the pile which heated up and exploded like gunshots echoing up the valley. Em and I tossed our objects on the fire and welcomed the coming of spring.


“I’m grateful that we made the bonfire and had a nice day.”
(Confused? Look)